Three days in Paris…

What can be said about Paris that has not been said before? After this brief Barthesian moment of doubt, I return to plonking narrative.

The first day in Paris we set out late afternoon to see the Eiffel Tower. We approached from the other side of the Seine, as we were told to do, and as we turned the corner the famous structure rose up as it ought to do. Magnificent. Two women wearing Pussy Riot T-shirts and micro-shorts were dancing (badly) for cameras in the open area in front of the tower. Two sets of Japanese couples in white silk and fur outfits arrived for wedding photos. Xavier and Meiduo had green icecreams (pistachio and mint).

Watch it:

The second day we all slept in. In fact, the children are sleeping in every day. Our home here is like a ship, and it is silent in the mornings, cut off from the street and very cosy. We decided to focus on food and visit the market. Mei stayed home with her new friend Antoine, who lives next door. He is six. Chris, Xavier and I walked down Rue Charonne to the Marche d’Aligre, the famous market located in the 12th arrondissement. On the way Xavier bought an éclair, and thus vowed to eat one a day for the rest of the trip.

On the way to the market there was the normal orientation problems, followed by the normal intramarriage finger-pointing that would be familiar to our friends from home.

The market is fantastic. Outside is fruit and vegetables, and then there is the covered market replete (what can I say?) with cheeses, meatses, oilses, breadses, fishes and all manner of things once alive now recently dead and henceforth cured, dried, smoked, marinated, macerated, augmented, plucked and primped.

We spent a small fortune on fresh produce so we could save money and cook at home.

Day 3…it rained. Unlike the rest of Europe, we don’t complain about rain. We love it. We are from Perth. It doesn’t really rain anyway; it is more like drizzle, which we relish. We set off to find our friend Zhu Zhu, who is studying in Paris. We met at the Hotel de Ville, the centre of Parisian municipal leadership. At this point the pleasant drizzle was rather heavy and we ran across the Seine onto the Ile-de-Cite to experience the Gothic splendour of Notre Dame Cathedral, which both architects and engineers will be interested to know is one of the first buildings in the world to use flying buttresses.

Zhu Zhu had been many times with friends visiting Paris, but professed herself completely bamboozled and stumped by the meaning of the whole thing. It is a very Catholic place, I told her, right down to the little machines which dispense memorial coins for 1 Euro and the shop in the corner stuffed with expensive holy paraphernalia and plastic statuary, no doubt all made in China, a point which I made to Zhu Zhu and which she understood, fully.

Notre Dame is beautiful. It is to be seen, and it is worth paying 4 Euros to step into the Treasury to see the chalices and reliquaries.

Zhu Zhu found them very creepy. I have always loved the fragments of saints bones encased in gold and silver. Evidence has never been Catholicism’s strong point, which is perhaps why I was obsessed with relics when I was a child.

I was amazed to learn that the Crown of Thorns….sorry, THE Crown of Thorns is resident at Notre Dame!! It is brought into the public for only one day a year, so we were left to infer its presence.

AJA (trans: According to Julian Assange) the thorns were hidden during the French Revolution, when Notre Dame was desecrated and re-dedicated to the The Cult of Reason, and re-assembled. Notre Dame also holds a purported fragment of THE cross and a Holy Nail. Incroyable.

We are hoping to return to Notre Dame for mass on Sunday morning to hear the famous choir and organist.

Where was I? I am running out of time. Chris and I are heading off to Belleville and it is 4 stops away.

More later …